18th Louise Hay
Award

Citation for Harriet S. Pollatsek

In recognition of her wide range of outstanding contributions to mathematics
education, the Association for Women in Mathematics (AWM) presents the
Eighteenth Annual Louise Hay Award to Harriet S. Pollatsek of the Department
of Mathematics and Statistics at Mount Holyoke College.

Harriet Pollatsek received her doctorate from the University of Michigan in
1967 under the direction of Jack McLaughlin. Throughout her career she has
remained an active mathematical researcher, with contributions ranging from
cohomology of linear groups, to difference sets in finite groups, and quantum error
correcting codes, and visiting appointments at the University of Oregon,
University of Cambridge, Queen Mary College of the University of London, and
the University of Sussex.

What has most characterized her entire career is her love of mathematics and
her energy and enthusiasm for fostering a love of it in others. She believes that
everyone can benefit from learning mathematics and that the way it is taught
should give students multiple opportunities to be brought into the mathematical
fold.

As a faculty member at Mount Holyoke College since 1970, she expanded the
department’s view of what can serve as a potential entry point into the major by
helping develop 100-level “explorations” courses, which students may use as
prerequisites for certain non-calculus mathematics major requirements. She was
one of the designers of the Five College Calculus in Context sequence, played a
large role in creating and piloting “Case Studies in Quantitative Reasoning,”
played a key role in a Dana Foundation effort to increase under-represented
individuals in mathematics courses, was one of the developers of a National
Endowment for the Humanities–funded program to spread mathematics across the
curriculum, and was critical in the design of a program to allow Mount Holyoke
students to graduate with an accredited engineering major through the University
of Massachusetts, Amherst.

For majors and potential majors, she co-developed an innovative mathematics
laboratory course and then became a co-author and the lead editor of a textbook for
it, Laboratories in Mathematical Experimentation. This course has become the
lynchpin of the mathematics major at Mount Holyoke. Students in the course first
explore interesting mathematical questions by generating examples and discerning
patterns and then state and prove theorems about them. After graduation, students
often report that it was the laboratory course that most influenced their decision to
major in the department and that the course made them more likely to read
mathematics actively, to “mess around” with a problem, and to formulate an
argument clearly. Following her philosophy of finding ways to introduce students
as early as possible to the richness of mathematics, she developed a course in Lie
groups, which has only calculus and linear algebra as a prerequisite and may be
taken independently of a standard abstract algebra course. In addition, she has
directed many independent students and twice directed summer research groups.

Current students laud her patience, her clarity, her availability, her
thoughtfulness, and her craft. It is clear from their comments that every
assignment, every test, every interaction is calculated to foster their understanding
and to use their growing understanding of the material to win them over. To
address the range of student backgrounds and abilities, she assigns challenge
problems, a certain number of which a student must tackle with some success in
order to earn an A or A–. Former students are equally enthusiastic. For instance,
one wrote: “The passion that Harriet has in mathematics and in the education of
mathematics has always been an inspiration to me; more importantly, her faith in
what I can achieve and who I can become will always remain a strong motivation
to me in the days to come.” Another stated: “She was great in the classroom, is
incredibly wonderful to her students, seems totally unruffled all the time, is
administratively and bureaucratically very successful, and just seems to ‘do it all’
with class and dignity.” A third referred to the way she continues to help students
long after they have left the campus: “She understands and is committed to the
notion that education doesn’t take place just in the classroom, and it doesn’t take
place just in a four-year window. Education can take place in every interaction,
and mentoring can continue for decades.”

Harriet Pollatsek has made major contributions to mathematics education
beyond the teaching of undergraduates. She has served for 20 years as an active
and valued advisor for Mount Holyoke’s SummerMath and SEARCH programs
(for high school students) and for the SummerMath for Teachers program (for K–
12 teachers). In describing her work with them, the program directors commented
that she has “the ability to be optimistic and realistic at the same time” and “to
make you feel important and valued while spurring you to look critically at your
work,” and that she “is never too busy to find a time to listen and to give her
scrupulously honest and well-thought-out feedback. If she makes a suggestion you
know it is solidly grounded and never given lightly.”

At the national level, in addition to her co-authorship of mathematics textbooks
and other curricular materials, she chaired the Mathematical Association of
America’s Committee on the Undergraduate Program in Mathematics (CUPM)
and led the writing team that produced the CUPM Curriculum Guide 2004:
Undergraduate Programs and Courses in the Mathematical Sciences. David
Bressoud, current chair of CUPM and a member of the writing team wrote: “This
was an amazingly ambitious undertaking. For the first time, CUPM was looking
not just at the sequence of courses that lead to the mathematics major, but at all
courses offered by departments of mathematics. . . . The goal was nothing less than
a set of recommendations that departments could use to help leverage resources
and reform. Harriet Pollatsek did an amazing job of shepherding this project. . . .
She kept the team pulling together . . . and helped ensure a consistently high level
of work. She refused to be named first author on this report, but she should have
been so acknowledged.” Bressoud went on to write that the Curriculum Guide
“has been a contribution to mathematics education with an importance that it is
hard to over-estimate.”

By the Louise Hay Award, AWM is proud to honor Harriet S. Pollatsek for her
steadfast enthusiasm and commitment to the goal of leading as many students as
possible to a genuine and deep appreciation for mathematics and mathematical
thinking.

Response from Harriet S. Pollatsek

When I arrived at Mount Holyoke in 1970, Louise Hay’s absence there was
still keenly felt. So I was aware of her accomplishments, and they were an
inspiration to me. Therefore, it is with particular gratitude and delight that I receive
this award bearing her name. In accepting it, I think of myself as a representative
of the many mathematicians and educators who do the excellent and important
work that the Hay Award recognizes.

In that spirit, I’d like to acknowledge some of the people who have shaped and
inspired me as a mathematician and a teacher. My high school teacher Kate Pankin
loved mathematics so much that her eyes would glisten when she taught. I was
fortunate to learn calculus from Edwin Moise, a man ahead of his time as a topflight
researcher dedicating himself to improving the learning and teaching of
mathematics. I fell in love with algebra in Donald Higman’s classes, and Jack
McLaughlin showed me the teacher/mathematician as consummate craftsman and
artist. I’ve learned much from the research mathematicians I’ve worked with over
the years, from my Calculus in Context comrades, from the mathematics educators
of the SummerMath programs and their teacher-collaborators, from the Mount
Holyoke faculty in other disciplines with whom I’ve developed curriculum and
taught, and perhaps most of all from my extraordinary colleagues in mathematics
and statistics. My students at Mount Holyoke have been a constant source of
inspiration; they push themselves to excel, but they always try to bring others
along with them. A few years ago, one even came back to teach me. As the
Committee on the Undergraduate Program in Mathematics prepared our CUPM
Curriculum Guide 2004, I met – and learned from – dozens and dozens of
generous and wise faculty in mathematics and in the mathematics-using
disciplines, in addition to my fellow CUPM members, especially my co-writers.

Every one of us has a list, like mine, of people who have influenced our goals
and helped us get closer to them. There is much more work for all of us to do, and
I hope this award encourages others, as it does me. My profound thanks go to the
Hay Award Selection Committee and to the AWM.